The fruits of insanity
by LivingInEndlessLines
Summary: The wise man who reduces all acts of the fool to foolishness is himself such a creature. No more so than when the percieved fool is the great Lord Voldemort. Dark!Harry. Cover by hogwartsalumni.
1. Almost alone

Bas-relief lacing illustrated the cottage door as it flew off it's hinges, breaking from it's arch-shaped frame and slamming into the supporting wall with a hollow pound that billowed through that once safe haven. Voldemort stepped into the exposed passage, seemingly dragging in the tenebrous air with him, as a terrified young woman scrambled up the adjacent staircase. A man, whom Voldemort knew to be James Potter, attempted to protect her. His corpse just as quickly impacted the narrow oak steps with a resonant thud.

The familiar banging of a violently closed door told the intruder what he had already predicted would occur. The woman, Lily Potter, was with him, the goal, the boy... Harry Potter. Gliding gracefully through the corridor to the sound of the mother cooing comforting noises to her newborn, Voldemort mercilessly dispatched the witch. Her magic, ancient and loving, was a protective rebound charm for the boy, recognized by the Dark Lord who studied it briefly whilst dwelling in the Hogwarts library's forbidden section. It was intended to defect the killing curse. However, unlike the luckiest of his victims, Voldemort wanted Harry very much alive. The murder of the Potter female made manifest the potential for creating a new horcrux. His seventh. Voldemort met eye to eye with the body of the mother only to step over it and towards the crib where the babe lay. Innocently ignorant of the magnitude of the past few seconds, Harry looked up to see a man, older than his father, peering down at him. A slim twig of yew shot out a single verdant flame, suspended in midair in between the two wizards. A sudden flash of brilliant green filled the room. Whilst the dust began to settle, placing his bony finger upon the child's chin, trailing the flesh through touch and sight, Voldemort grinned before swooping off into a nearby forest through a window shattered during his most recent confrontation.

\- " Rest for now, so my restlessness might meet it's end... " he murmured soothingly into the solitary abyss of the night before him.

* * *

_**\- 4 years later -**_

* * *

Harry starred intermittently at each of the four walls in that broom closet under the stairs. The morbid poverty of his surroundings comforted the child, cradled by peeling wallpaper and shadows of the corners above his scruffy haired head. At least he wasn't out there, with the Dursleys.

\- " Child minded adults with a penchant for psychological abuse and nepotism. " breathed a distant voice into the empty space of the closet.

Of course, Harry, being the rather solitary boy that he was, never spoke of these traits but felt their effects since he arrived on their doorstep four years ago. No, their imperfections were only pinpointed and explained by the Fogman, Harry's best and sole companion. The Dursleys never seemed to notice him, and when confronted by Harry whom adamantly defended his existence with as much determination as a four year old could muster, they merely dismissed it as a fantasy of an idiotic child.

\- " The boy's bonkers Petunia ! No surprise, with parents like his. As high as kites they were ! Do you remember the last time we went to see them ? " Petunia pulled a copy of Dragons, fairies and ogres, a guide to muggle misconceptions or how to avoid a bloody brutal death from her crayon-scraped cherry wood bookshelf, all the way at the bottom, concealed by a gaudy ceramic pug. She held it up to her husband, Vernon, and through mocking laughter managed to say :

\- " Yes, I remember... What a riot ! Dragons ? Fairies ? Bloomin' twits. "

\- " I'm hungry ! " moaned the Dudley Vernon, Harry's contemporary, age-wise at least.

\- " Do fry up some grub dear. " asked Vernon nonchalantly.

\- " Ok, I'll do us some bacon and eggs. " replied Petunia, hiding the book once again then pressing her nose lovingly against her son's, reciprocated with a Harry could smell the bacon with it's smokey meat tones wafting into closet through the vent in the door. He knew Petunia would fetch him for his breakfast when they had finished their meal and plated up the leftovers, but knowing no different this didn't bother Harry.

\- " Why should they get to eat first ", whispered a ghostly voice into Harry's ear," you're greater than them, stronger, and yet they command you're every action. You already know they're leaving you out, that you're not equals. Not family. "

\- " But they'll ground me if I'm naughty... " Harry's sentence trailed off into the memory of him having spilt a glass of grape juice on Petunia's then new angora wool sweater, responded by a livid look plastered on her reddening face and Vernon's meaty grasp throwing him in the closet for two days without food and drink. He was three years old at the time.

\- " Don't you wish you could punish them as they do you ? When a person is bad, that person needs to be punished, after all. It's only fair. "

\- " No, they're adults, children don't punish their parents. You're silly ! " giggled the boy, responding despite not knowing what some of the words meant. But the Fogman knew nervousness and anger, and could sense it in the childish quips, so he continued to push the issue at hand.

\- " What if I told you that you're special ? That with just a flick of a hand and a well placed word you could fly or fight a monster a hundred times your size ? Because you are. You could do those things and more... so much more, if you simply tried. Why should they get to eat first ? " Under the guise of the child friendly Fogman, Voldemort was using his charm to attempt to sway to boy to his way of thinking, tempting him to give in to his tightly bottled temper.

The boy didn't answer. Gradually the noises of the Dursleys became heavily dampened, drowned out by an almost tangible concentration.

Woosh ! The flames sprang up into the air above the pan where the bacon was cooking. Petunia yelped and jumped back, turning towards the fire extinguisher suspended behind her, but when she turned back around the flames had disappeared, leaving only the charred bacon and eggs. Vernon heard the scream and stampeded in the open kitchen to see what had caused the disarray of his spouse.

\- " The fat must have caught ablaze... " mused Petunia, an obvious air of pensive skepticism lining her usually shrill voice as she looked onwards to the closet.

Then she saw it. A pair of thin black irises intently staring back at her through the grating of the vent, lit up by the morning light passing through the opaque glass of the front door. Harry's eyes were a bright green. Against her better judgement she pounced on the closet door, those hateful eyes never looking away, opening it only to find Harry laying on his bed looking up at her. For the first time in his life with the Dursleys, Harry was served at the same time as everyone else.


	2. Friends and fear

_Incendio_, Harry mouthed silently with an outstretched finger lined up with his unwavering glare. Peering from his rain stained window into the azure hue of early morn, he directed his gaze and mischievous intentions at his aunt Petunia's half visible flowerbed. The apricot flames vigorously clung to the hortensia, albeit ephemerally, before torrential rainfall choked them out. The Dursleys had given Harry his cousin's old room for his fifth birthday present, not only because of Dudley's incessant whining for a new _Robots vs Mutants_ wallpaper theme, but mostly due to the fact that their nephew terrified them. It had gotten to the point where Petunia found herself crawling outside the broom closet just below the vent as to avoid being noticed by the emerald eyed boy. The worst thing was when he unprovokingly began laughing, piercing the fear suspended silence of the household, and there was nothing no one dared do about it. On the rare occasions when she got lost in thought and found herself starring at that door absent-mindedly, she would always come crashing back to reality when those somber serpentine eyes flashed her way.

The change in Harry's demeanor transpired in the space of three weeks, during which time a variety of supernatural discrepancies took place, such as Petunia's pan of bacon and eggs gushing out a column of flame as she was cooking them, and the pastoral inspired fine bone china statuettes beside the television set that would inexplicably move when out off sight, even for a second. Though it was when Vernon began watering the garden, two days short of Harry's fifth birthday, only to encounter a titanic charcoal-scaled snake that had risen from beneath the shallow dirt and lunged towards the door which Vernon had quickly coward behind that the Dursley family finally gave in to the boy. Petunia determined that they must have been Harry's doing, knowing only too well the true nature of her deceased sister and that cocky husband of hers, and so convinced Vernon to go along with the room change, careful not to give away her suspicions of the fantastical element afoot, lest Vernon question her sanity. Hoping that the room would calm his outbursts, Vernon commanded Harry to climb up the carpeted staircase beneath which he once slept, then, with the closet's meager furnishings lifted in both hands, the colossus's tossed them on the floor of his nephew's new residence. In truth, a mere illusion of superiority, though neither Harry nor Vernon knew this.

Before he could even make up his bed, Harry heard Vernon's heavy breathing on the other side of the door, applying blue tack to the keyhole. Their fear, especially his aunt's, entertained and supported him, though he was unaware of it's extent and considered it more as a form of respect than dominance. Clasping the cream colored sheet at it's corners, he draped it gently over the pillows as he proceeded to climb on the clunky steel framed furniture. It creaked painfully from the slightest movement.

\- " Must be from the strain that sack of flesh and fat placed upon it all these years... " joked Voldemort, whom has since the first incidence of Harry's discovery of magic disclosed his name and title of Dark Lord to Harry. It hadn't initially been his intention, but he quickly began to appreciate Harry fine capacity for discerning between truth and lies, and the Fogman persona wasn't cutting it anymore.

\- " Don't be mean. Dudley's a bit of a bully, but that doesn't mean you should be to ! " declared Harry, his mother's sympathy and father's courage echoed through his words.

\- " That boy has a lot of insecurities, and he's an imbecile. He'll amount to nothing and die in a dead-end muggle job. He doesn't want to be anything, just to be comfortable whilst applying the least effort. Muggles are unwort- "

\- " What's a muggle ? And an insecuries ? ", interrupted Harry much to Voldemort content. The child was beginning to trust him enough to employ familiarities, no longer merely being his friend from boredom and loneliness. Curiosity can be a window into a naive mind.

\- " It's a lesser person. A human with no magical abilities. Also known as squibs when born within magical families. You're better than even the greatest muggle though. They don't merit thinking about to be honest. And it's insecuri**te**s. They're the things people feel ashamed, afraid and intimidated by, simply put, which they usually try to hide from others. " stated Voldemort, carefully exuding confidence, whilst refraining from the use of arrogance.

\- " Like you are afraid of dying ? "

That one sentence. Those six little words, strung together by a five year old... As the commander of a legion of witches, wizards, dementors and a vast array of inherently vile creatures Voldemort often faced experienced liars, manipulators and even his obsessed fanatics head on, but this was absurd. His ever mind-narrowing fear of death plucked from his mind as if it was a low-bearing apple... Was he his own snake in this analogy ? Did he subconsciously provide the clues for the boy to pick upon ? No, he had more self-control than that. He starred at Harry, and to his own surprise answered with a shiver inducing "_yes"_.

\- " It's ok, I'm scarred of Uncle Vernon too, so it's ok. " Voldemort found the boy's honest and impromptu attempt to comfort him ineffective, but heart-warming nevertheless.

\- " Sleep now, I'll watch over you and scare away any trolls that may stray from their path. " It was only midday, but the use of wandless magic over the last few weeks had forced Harry to take regular naps to compensate for the strain placed on his body.

\- " Night night... " burbled Potter, now tucked beneath his bedsheets, before slipping off into his dreams. Voldemort hovered his now corporeal hand over the boy's face, delicately brush away stray strand of hair daring to disturb his young prodigy.

The Dark Lord turned his back to the infant, memories off Mrs. Cole, the director of the orphanage that housed him during his lonely childhood, and her reminiscent tales of his own mother rapidly boiling to the surface. The creation off his horcruxes and the splitting of his soul forbade Voldemort from feeling love, however the emotions which he had for the boy, as he understood it, came close. Protectiveness, respectful fascination and a deep understanding of his loneliness all lead him to care for the Potter child, more so than he would admit, even to himself. But that wouldn't deter him from his plans immortality.


	3. Dumbledore's doings

Chaotic shards tearing through the skies announced Albus Dumbledore's arrival at Godric's Hollow. The fidelius charm had failed and, worst of all, the secret-keeper, Sirius Black, had been an agent of the Dark Lord. To think he would betray Lily and James to such an extent just to obtain Voldemort's passing favor enraged the aging sorcerer. The blackened grass which puddled around the steppingstone path, the disheveled oak door leaning feebly against the inside wall, the once inviting warmth of lamplight scattered throughout the cottage shining lifelessly beyond bleak window panes... This once safe-house made beloved home had become a house of horrors. Dumbledore waded heavily towards the entrance through which Voldemort had stood only hours beforehand, glimpsing at the marbling body of James spread out along the adjacent staircase. A moment of sorrowful pity locked his muscles into place, but was quickly interrupted by his determination to see firsthand if his worst fears were true.

Edging past the young father's corpse, Dumbledore advanced one miniscule step at a time terrified of what he knew must be at the end of the corridor, his lofty eggshell-colored robe stroking the exposed wood and skin he left behind. He arrived at the foot of the wide-open nursery door, slowly tracing the legs of the night's second body to it's tear stained face. Lily Evans Potter. He knew she would have thrown herself against the world to save her boy, and here was the ultimate proof. One of the kindest, most generous people that Dumbledore ever had the privilege of knowing in his unnaturally long lifetime, cut down years before her prime. He dared not move towards the cot. Almond tears formed in the corners of his eyes, flooding the wrinkled lines of burdening knowledge and everlasting regret engraved by the hesitant hand of Time along the Hogwarts headmaster's face. The sight was that of a man defeated. _The greatest wizard of his time_, _Supreme Mugwump and Grand Sorcerer _lauded the distant voices in his mind, their unimportance sharpening his gut-wrenching guilt. How could he have been so self involved as to let this happen ? These grandiose honorifics thrown at his feet like fanciful bouquets towards an adored cult personality. Bowing his head in defeat as the anguish of loss planted it's despotic flag, Dumbledore managed to gather up the courage to tread towards the simple egg-and-dart styled cradle, caressing the side bars nervously before peering down...

He was alive ! Asleep but definitely breathing long peaceful lungfuls of air, staled by the surrounding death. Dumbledore's expression didn't change, he merely pulled out his wand and swayed it smoothly above the cot. _Residual magic of the darkest kind, and remnants of Lily's love still linger... Voldemort's curse must have backfired, leaving him in a weakened state. That's why he couldn't kill the boy..._ He looked to Lily, then back to Harry.

\- " Evil has stained the air here, dear boy. I'll find you a new home, don't you worry. " picking the baby up, wishing he could be as calm as his new found charge, Dumbledore apparated to his office in Hogwarts, the familiar scent of liquorice and well-worn tomes comforting his arrival. The loud popping sound accompanying his apparition caused young Harry to stir awake in his arms, visibly distressed and sobbing noisily.

Swooping down his spiral staircase, Dumbledore flew from his office and urged a patrolling red-eyed Mrs. Norris to find Minerva Mcgonagall and Rubeus Hagrid as soon as possible and to send them to his quarters. The feline guard complied, and within fifteen minutes they were both in front of the headmaster's large mahogany bureau.

\- " What's wrong Albus ? Is it about the Potters ? " interrogated Mcgonagall who had recently been made aware of the prophecy suggesting Harry would be Voldemort's downfall, though after seeing her elder flinch painfully at the name wished she hadn't.

\- " Oh... Well, that's... Poor Lily... " spewed the half-giant, too overcome to speak any sense. He had seen that little girl grow. Not that he was much older than her, but he had once spied the young woman transmogrifying gnomes into caterpillars and found her to be charmingly curious as did many others.

\- " Lily and James Potter are dead. However, their son is still alive ", Albus admitted, revealing the now calmed infant from beneath the folds in his robe, " and furthermore I have reason to believe that Voldemort is in a weakened state. ".

\- " We have to find this boy a home Dumbledore. " insisted the witch, cautiously observing the curious paintings that had just woken up to learn more of the commotion. Voldemort may have been dead, but his followers were very much alive and probably out for vengeance.

\- " I have already found him a place. Number 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging. It's the residence of Vernon and Petunia Dursley, the latter being Lily's sister. Minerva, please inspect the area for any traces of dark magic, I'll keep Harry here until tomorrow evening. Hagrid, you will drive the boy on your motorcycle, avoiding cities where there are suspected forces of Voldemort's. Don't land until you reach 4 Privet Drive, and try not to sit on this one... "

\- " That's all well and good Albus, but what of the Dursleys ? How do you know they'll take him in ? " asked Mcgonagall almost maternally.

\- " The only way Voldemort could have known James and Lily's whereabouts is by Sirius's betrayal ! He was their secret-keeper, and you know as well as I that such a person can only give away their secret willingly. Neither torture nor the imperiatus curse would have been effective. Being Harry's selected godfather, he was the logical choice for parenthood if a scenario such as ours was ever to occur, but now the boy has no one. No one except the Dursleys. He can't stay here, we would be endangering the lives of the other students and faculty. And I suspect that Petunia wouldn't let her only niece perish, even with her crippling jealousy of wizard-kind. " explained Dumbledore, visibly flustered, and whose usual composed attitude was rapidly decaying. Minerva approached the boy, cupping his all in her spindly arms, knowing that Dumbledore was already beginning to adapt, and in all probability was scheming on how to bring down Voldemort.

\- " I'll do whatever it takes. No harm shall come to you as long as I'm around. " she chirped matter-of-factually, bringing her playful expression closer to Harry's plump face.

\- " I reckon' he'll be alright he will. " said Hagrid, the gravity of reality briefly alleviated by Mcgonagall's jovial tone.

And so the following night, accompanied by the two wise wizards and Hagrid, the blanketed Harry Potter was delivered to the doorstep of his tyrannical aunt and uncle despite Mcgonagall's protests against the muggles whom she piercingly perceived as thorough cretins after only three short hours of distant observation.

None of them noticed the snake slither into house through an open window.


	4. Truths

From ages four to five, by way of concealed warping forces, Harry Potter experimentally orchestrated wondrous tricks on the simpletons with which he lived, scaring them witless, even more so than they already were. By the time he was nine his knowledge of the arts had deepened exponentially, capable of casting fifth year spells effortlessly and with great efficacy, a feat rendered all the more impressive by Harry's repeated absence of a wand. In fact, he had never even used Voldemort's boney wooden extension, despite the latter's persistent prompting, as he viewed the casting of one's magic to be inherently personal and wasn't to be shared under any form. His serpentine featured friend considered this as an egotistical appreciation of power. He was relieved by the child's ever growing self-confidence and by the fact that he could defend himself when necessary, as Voldemort himself wouldn't be capable of protecting him once he went to the heavily warded Hogwarts.

Harry lived and breathed on the vast information that both Voldemort and his accompanying tomes would bring. Alchemy, defense against the dark arts, runes... He would read them all with an indifferent favoritism, devouring one line after another, grasping at greatness through the labyrinth of constantly complicating phrases perpetuating excellency and eloquence. Voldemort was given ample opportunity to ripen his rapidly sweetening fruit of labor, only leaving his side during Harry's time at muggle school and at meals, time which the Dark Lord spent organizing a select group of elite followers and putting convoluted precautions into place. An unintentional though unimportant side effect of Harry's single tracked mind was his disastrous results in most of his muggle studies save sport and music, the latter unearthing his passion for the violincello. Even Dudley had higher grades, much to Vernon's overwhelming pride, not that Harry cared enough to notice. To him the laws of chemistry and physics were nothing more than temperamental autistic playthings that always rearranged their magically disheveled states in a sort of marital accordance between absolute simplicity and ease to once again find normality.

With his diverse sixth year teachings soon to be at their end, Voldemort believed that it was finally time to discuss the elephant in the room. The reason for his presence needed an explanation, usually a question he dismissed by blatantly obvious lies which Harry's wisely cautious temperament didn't appreciate. After having painstakingly created and expertly dissimulated his first six horcruxes within objects that possessed great value to either him or wizard-kind in general, Salazar Slytherin's heir arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary to hide the final fragment of his dilapidated soul, mutilated beyond any recognition, within another living human being. It was here where Harry came into his plans, the prophetic child destined to kill him would ironically be forged into his new conduit, robust in body and mind alike. By doing so he not only ensured a flawless continuum of his own consciousness, equipping his inevitable new generation with it's leader, but also he could continue to be alive, albeit emotionally stinted, allowing him to personally enforce his revolutionary provoking procedures when the need would arise. Under his solitary rule, perfected by crushingly compounding emotion of the undesirably zealous, he would oversee the minutest developments of the new world order he sought to breath into existence. One without muggles always scraping their proudly balled fists through the dirt and dust, with a peerage-based hierarchy amidst the inhabitants of the wizarding world, and with all lesser mystical entities serving him by fulfilling the menial tasks required to sustain and see the perseverance of a neophyte society. Voldemort had planned for every contingency he could imagine. No one could halt his all encompassing cleanse of humanity.

Harry opened the rust hued door, visibly glad to not only return to Voldemort but also be on his weekend, away from the horrors of the mundane.

\- " Please close the door, we need to discuss things. " said Voldemort, one hand on the desk to his side, the other subtly indicating to Harry to approach him.

Complying with Voldemort's request the child severed his link to the rest of the world, the stainless steel handle slowly springing back into position accompanied by a concerto of cogs and coils clicking and clanging carefully as he stepped towards his mentor.

\- " About what ? " asked Harry, sprawling his clearly unloved school supplies alongside his bed.

\- " Your past, this present and our future. " mused Voldemort, the cheesy rhetoric forcing a smirk out of the boy now sat before him. " I don't suspect you know much about your parents, Lily and James Potter. "

\- " Aside from Petunia's lie that they died in a car crash ? No I don't know anything about them. "

A few tense moments pass before Voldemort charismatically suggests :

\- " I managed to obtain a photo of them with their childhood friends, if you would care to see. "

\- " No thanks. "

\- " But - "

\- " What purpose would it serve ? None. I have no need to recognize them. If you feel as though if would be useful in some way then I'll look. Otherwise I don't need to. " that last sentence struck a cord in Voldemort, the melodious reward of satisfied anticipation echoing electricity to his tapping fingertips. At first he thought the boy might be attempting to disguise his sadness, but the look in his eyes was of pristine indifference. He genuinely didn't care. Good.

\- " I killed them both. He died protecting her, and she suffered the same fate for your sake. " hissed the Dark Lord, sadism lining the potent words as his eyes darted to the boy's changing features. They were surprisingly subtle, but they were there. Yet it wasn't the predictable loss or horror that coated the once puerile visage, but rather a self-preserving syncretism of controlled hedonistic thoughts quickly settling into the slippery-edged chasm of the always unhappy Hegelian dichotomy of caution and whimsy. Dilated pupils and pursed lips signaled his excitement, though he was cloaking it quite well, betrayed only to Voldemort as he was the one who taught the boy self-control of mind in the first place.

For years now Harry had no longer been naive, a child in nothing but body and age. He had glimpsed at the idealized wizard archetypes in cartoons on television, typically wearers of flamboyant attire with an attraction to the peculiarities of life. Voldemort wasn't like them, hugged from head to feet in tailored designer suits and pointed-toe leather shoes. This was not an eccentric yet fun loving, pipe smoking, robe wearing hero, this was a madman in Armani Privé. The meticulously fine cross-stitching of his elegant personality occasionally stretched sufficiently to permit a darting glimpse of the beast beneath, but only now did Harry have confirmation he was a killer.

\- " How did you kill them ? " Harry demanded forcefully.

_This. _This was the prodding question that saw curiosity's _how_ overcome sanity's _why._ This is the impersonal inquirer Voldemort hoped the boy could, would and must be. For a night, polished masques of teacher and student vanished, and the air studiously shone beryl green with pride and death. That was the night that Harry Potter learned how to kill. 

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Thank you for your support, every favorite and review is like a hug well done and I appreciate them a lot. Anyway hope you like this chapter, have a good day ! =)


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